Scott Burdick The Banishment of Beauty An Artists Documentary

Scott Burdick is an artist who’s work I have been watching for quite some time. He has a really good aproching to Portrait painting, as well as a great eye for colour and aplying interesting brush strokes.

In this documentary

Scott Burdick talks about the decline of the sublime. How contemporary art is now dominated by simplistic canvases, justified by a famous artists name or their mission statement. How Paintings were once about the beatuy, the technique, the imposibility of an artist turning a blank canvas into something living. Where today it seems if they can’t entertain you with something simple, they will do so with something shocking.

In this documentary Scott Burdick uses numerous examples of Paintings and situations to showcase this glorification of throw away art. Art your grandma would put on a fridge, says it’s amazing, then throw away at the first chance… Art we all make when first starting to paint, is now on the walls of galleries and given value. The type of art that is easy and fast to make, that galleries can market, that no one will remember… But hey, they got their money.

My View

It seems most artists these days either have no technical ability, or a lot of technical ability with no artistry. Art doesn’t seem to inspire anymore, it is ether made to sell things or impress. It feels like the bar for art is very low these days, as is the requirements for being called an artist. If you had a choice between two surgeons, would you take the one who had been practicing for 1o years. Or the one who decided to be a surgeon yesterday, saying – let’s open you up, go with the flow, just see what happens. Yet in the art world those two people are both called Artists, both with an equal say and valid opinion. Kinda bullshit.

That being said we all have our bias, to me the holy grail of painting resides in surrealistic realism. A blending of the inner and outer world, translated realistically onto canvas. Which, is not for everyone…

I will say though, if you’re going to try something like painting don’t do it by half measures. Continuously teach yourself about that medium and give it everything you’ve got, otherwise what’s the point. Don’t limit yourself, An artist who has taught themselves to paint photorealism (without tracing) can paint anything. Where An artist who has only ever done abstract is greatly limited. Even if you have no aspirations of realism, there are more lessons to be learnt in the details than the broad strokes. You will learn more by following the paths of masters, choosing your destination at the cross road their coffin marks.

An amazing and well considered painting by Scott Burdick

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Scott Burdick, “Yanka” oils, 20″ x 30″

If you feel inspired by his work the way I was in art school, go to his Website Here. He has a lot of great work there as well as many helpful paid for video lessons.